


Phase

by apparitionism



Series: Dynamics [6]
Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 21:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2482292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparitionism/pseuds/apparitionism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is more of that ballet AU that is not Roadie's... this is very sweet, so either sorry! or you're welcome! depending on how you feel about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phase

Aunt Tracy helps.

Because Aunt Tracy understands.

“You realize your moms are going to kill me if they find out about this, right?” Aunt Tracy asks you, basically every week. But she takes you to class anyway. And when she can’t, your Uncle Liam or your Uncle Steve, or both of them together, take her place. Aunt Tracy says they are crazy boys because they are thrilled to be inka hoots with her, whatever kind of owls _those_ are, but you don’t care, just as long as you get to go to class.

Ballet class, that is, so you can learn to do what your mama does. Both Mama and your mom are fine with you learning to do what _Mom_ does: you get to sit in her workroom and watch everything that happens, as long as you are mostly quiet. She lets you use her sketchpads to show her your ideas about costumes for Mama and other clothes for dancers and swimmers and runners and anybody else who moves. She even sometimes takes you to the lab where they test the clothes, and that’s exciting because they have wind tunnels. The latest time, you watched a skier lean forward and fake-jump off a fake mountaintop, and you asked Mom, “Can I have a wind tunnel for Christmas?” Mom said no. Mom doesn’t usually say no, not that fast, so you were pretty sure she meant it. But still, you are hoping that maybe there will be one in the living room, or maybe the hallway of your apartment building because they are really big, on Christmas morning.

But Mama doesn’t want you “anywhere near ballet,” which is silly, because you are near ballet anytime you are near Mama. And you like being near Mama. Mom is the one you roughhouse with, scramble over, get swung by, collapse onto because you’re giggling so hard. Mama is the one you curl up with when you’re tired. One time you did that and Mama said to Mom, are you all right? And Mom answered, I just have something in my eye, that’s all. And Mama smiled and kissed your head, and Mom came over to the sofa and kissed both of you.

You are also near ballet when you are in Mom’s workroom and the other dancers are there and they are ruffling your hair, which is curly like Mom’s, and calling you “prima junior.” Mom says it would be helpful for keeping the peace in the company if you didn’t tell Mama about that, but anyway they only do it because Mom calls you Junior most of the time. So do Aunt Tracy and Grandma and Grandpa.

Uncle Steve calls you “junior mint,” and so did Uncle Liam, but now he’s turning that into “thin mint” because he says you are “growing up not out,” and that means that you are getting pretty tall for someone who is six-and-three-quarters. Almost seven. You have only a little more than two feet to go until you are as tall as they are. And they are both pretty tall. One of them is your bio-dad, but nobody except the hospital knows which one, and they both say they will be happy to wait to care about it until you decide you care about it. You are pretty sure you will never care about it, because you love them both, and you would rather have two bio-dads who are your uncles than one anyway.

You’re near ballet when you’re around them, too, even more ballet than usual, because they have a big room in their apartment that is just for dancing. They can jump really high when they dance, higher even than basketball players do when they dunk. And when they do grand jetés it’s like that one time at the zoo when you saw a big cat leap from one tree branch onto another.

Mama probably thinks you don’t even know what a jeté _is_. A grand one or any other kind. It’s like she thinks you can’t use a phone or a tablet: you’ve seen so many videos of dancers doing jetés that you can barely remember which one is which. It took you a while, when you were little, to realize that there were probably videos of Mama out there too. And once you saw them, you realized that you mostly only wanted to watch Mama dance. Because she’s different.

That isn’t a surprise, because Mama is usually different from other people. For one thing, she is practically the only person who doesn’t call you Junior. Mama calls you darling, and daughter, but mostly she calls you baby, and baby Bering-Wells, and when she’s talking to Mom, she calls you “ _the_ baby.”  Mom says she got into this habit when you were born, and when Mama gets into habits she doesn’t get out of them very easily. For example how sometimes she calls Mom “engineer,” which Mom says is a habit from a really long time ago. And the way she calls Aunt Amanda “your mother’s swimmer,” which Mom says is a habit that is not really a habit but Mama does it because she is still pretending to not be over it. Whatever _it_ is. And Mom says she does _that_ because you may be prima junior, Junior, but your mama is definitely prima senior, and no one is ever allowed to forget that.

You think grownups are mostly crazy, except for Aunt Tracy, and also probably Aunt Amanda’s boyfriend Pete, who likes cookies and football and basketball and says he doesn’t understand engineering or dancing or anything more complicated and artsy than the cover two defense. You don’t know what the cover two defense is yet, but you like cookies almost as much as Pete does, so you two hang out sometimes.

You like your ballet teacher, Ms. Leena, a lot too. She gave you kind of a funny look when she was calling roll on the first day and she got to you. She called every kid “Mister” or “Miss” with their last name attached, and right after she said “Miss Bering-Wells,” she repeated “Bering-Wells” in a weird way. You raised your hand and said “here” and she said, “Miss Bering-Wells as in _the_ Helena Bering-Wells?” and you said, “She’s my mama.” And then she said, “And Myka Bering-Wells,” and you said, “She’s my mom.” And Ms. Leena said, “Well no pressure there,” and you thought she looked worried, and you have always known that dance people sometimes look worried when your mama is around, so you said, “Mama isn’t here. Aunt Tracy brought me.” And Ms. Leena sighed and said, “Tracy Bering. Of course.”

But then she seemed to think everything would be okay. And now you like it when Ms. Leena calls you “Miss Bering-Wells.”

Ballet class is always one of the best things about every week, even when you can’t quite get all the steps right because you aren’t sure exactly where your feet are today. Ms. Leena is always telling you to watch your hands, too, because you have long hands, which Ms. Leena says will be very good later as long as you don’t get in the habit of flinging them around like frying pans now.

You are taller and stronger than all the other kids. This helps you do some things more easily than they can. It doesn’t help with other things.

You love learning new steps because Ms. Leena always tells the class what their names are in French and what the French words mean. Tendu means stretch, so that is the exercise where you stretch your leg out in all the different directions. Relevé means lifted, so you lift your heels off the floor. You like chassé, because it means chase, and because sometimes after everybody has done it right Ms. Leena will say “chassé tous!” and that means everybody chases everybody around the studio.

And you like pas de chat because it means “step of the cat,” and even though you can’t do the jumps right quite yet, you feel like a cat when you do it—not a big cat like Uncle Steve or Uncle Liam, but a regular cat. Sometimes when you are trying to do the leaps you think that maybe, if you can’t have a wind tunnel for Christmas, you could talk Mom into letting you have a cat instead. Though if you could have both, that would be even better.

****

You help Aunt Tracy sometimes too, in her workroom, like you do with Mom, and even more now that she is taking you to ballet class.

“If I’m going to be undermining your parents, we’d better have a convincing cover story,” she says. So you are learning about sets. Her work and her workroom are really different from Mom’s. Aunt Tracy makes a lot of models, but they aren’t models like with legos or in a dollhouse. They are boxes, kind of, that start out looking like stages, but she puts lots of weird things in them. She says they are what the ideas look like in her head for what the stage should feel like. For example she had a lot of ideas when she had to make a stage look like it was underwater so Mama could dance like a whale.

“Don’t whales just swim?”

“Your mama was playing a very special whale. Well, two very special whales. It’s a complicated story. And besides, animals can do all kinds of things.”

She shows you one box. You say, “But that’s just a bunch of blue swoopy shapes.” Aunt Tracy waits. This is something Aunt Tracy does a lot. She will wait and look at you, and you know that means you need to think harder. “Oh. Because the ocean is blue and swoopy?”

“Exactly. And sometimes it’s other things. Like this.” She takes out another box, and it’s got dark things in it, sharp shells painted black, and a piece of a bike tire, and some dark leaves, a big black plastic bag, a picture of a bird covered in something black and sticky.

“I don’t like that one. It makes me forget the blue and swoopy one.”

“That’s the idea,” Aunt Tracy says. She bumps your shoulder with hers. “But you can always look at the blue and swoopy one again, okay?”

****

You had asked Mom first about ballet. Mom said, “I really think we should table that for another few years, or maybe forever. Don’t you like swimming and basketball? And you can go back to tae kwon do when basketball season’s over.”

You like swimming and basketball a lot. And you like tae kwon do because of the kicking. But you told Mom that more than anything, you wanted to learn ballet.

Mom said, “Junior, your mama has been pretty clear on this point. She would really prefer it if you were just a normal kid.”

“Normal kids go to ballet all the time!”

“Well. Normal kids aren’t Helena Wells’s kid.”

“Helena Bering-Wells,” you said, and you felt all hot and sad.

So you thought about it for a while. You don’t remember, now, why you hoped Aunt Tracy would help, but she picked you up after school two days a week already, and Mom had already said that what the two of you got up to then was your business. You do remember that when you asked her, she said no at first, because you would be in ballet already if they wanted you to be. And you tried to explain that that was why you needed her help, because they didn’t want you to be. Mostly, Mama didn’t want you to be.

“But why is it so important,” Aunt Tracy asked.

“Because I want to be like Mama too. I already look like Mom, everybody says that, you and Grandma and Grandpa and even just plain old regular _people_ say it. But I’m not like Mama at all. We don’t have things incoming.”

“In _common_ , Junior. And you do have things in common with her. For example you are the only people in the world, as far as I know, who actually like eating kale.”

“I don’t even really like it so much but she really _does!_ ” you yelled. “So I said that I would like it with her!”

“Funny,” Aunt Tracy said, “I think that’s pretty much the same reason your mom goes to the opera.”

“Mom says she goes because she needs to keep an eye on Mama when she’s all dressed up.”

Aunt Tracy said, “That’s probably part of it. Your mama’s very beautiful.”

“Even more beautiful when she’s a ballet dancer.”

“How do you know that?”

“She’s on the internet. Can I _please_ have ballet lessons?”

“You seriously have made a plan in which I am going to take you to ballet lessons.”

“ _Secret_ ballet lessons. You have to remember it’s a secret. Aunt Tracy, I am not telling you a joke.”

“Secret ballet lessons,” Aunt Tracy said. “How old are you again?”

“Six.”

****

Your first recital is the week before Christmas, and you are so excited you almost tell Mom and Mama how excited you are, but then you remember that they don’t know, and they won’t be there, and that makes you a little sad. But Aunt Tracy and Uncle Steve and Uncle Liam will, and they’re excited too.

Uncle Steve tells you, “Remember, don’t think about your feet.”

Uncle Liam tells you, “Your Uncle Steve is crazy. Think hard about your feet. Don’t think about your _hands_.”

Aunt Tracy tells you, “Here’s an idea: ignore them and dance.”

When you and your class come out onto the stage, the audience applauds. That feels pretty good. You all start to dance, to do the steps Ms. Leena showed you, the ones you do together, and then each one of you is supposed to go to the front of the stage and do one thing on your own. You listen to the piano music and you wait your turn. You wait your turn, and you look out at the people. You see Uncle Liam first. Next to him on one side is Uncle Steve.

Next to him on the other side is Mama.

And Mom is on _her_ other side, and Mom has her arm around Mama, and Mom smiles at you when she sees that you see her, but Mama’s face is stuck for a minute like she’s surprised and maybe even angry, but then she smiles too, and that’s when you know it’s going to be okay.

On your own in the middle of the stage, you’re supposed to do two arabesques. During the first one, you’re nervous, and you’re pretty sure you didn’t get it quite right. You feel like you can do the second one better, but then you think about how many videos you’ve seen of Mama doing arabesques. Maybe Mama will show you how to do it right, if you say you want to get better. So you think about your feet, like Uncle Steve said not to do. You think about your hands, like Uncle Liam said not to do. And you don’t quite dance, like Aunt Tracy said to do. It’s almost an arabesque. But not quite.

****

Afterwards, everything is pretty crazy. Uncle Liam comes backstage to get you and take you to Mama and Mom. “It’s okay, right?” you ask him.

“No sweat, thin mint,” he says. “It’s totally okay. I mean, it’s your mama, so who really knows, but I’m pretty sure.”

You tiptoe up beside Mom, because Mama is talking to Uncle Steve.

“Leena is clearly extremely… nice, but I see that it will be necessary for  _someone_ to teach my daughter a proper arabesque,” you hear her grumble, and that’s when you know it’s going to be more than okay.

Mom leans down to you. “You’re not fooling me, Junior, with those arabesques,” she says into your ear. Mom still has to lean _way_ down to reach your ear, but probably not for too much longer. “I’m pretty sure you’ve been taking a class called Tricks 101 from your grandfather. Either that, or it’s genetic. Quite frankly I don’t know which option is scarier.”

“She’ll help me if she thinks I need her help,” you say.

“That’s exactly what I mean, you little sneak,” Mom tells you. “Don’t get me wrong, it works. And it ended up getting me your mama and you, and I wouldn’t trade either of you in.”

Aunt Tracy is trying to slip around her, but Mom grabs her by the collar of her shirt, just like she does to you sometimes, and pulls her back to stand beside her.

“You, I would trade in a heartbeat,” Mom says. “Except for the part where I wouldn’t.”

“Are you upset?” Aunt Tracy asks.

Mom gives her a shoulder bump.

Aunt Tracy says, “You did _not_ know!”

“I suspected,” Mom says. She puts her hand on the top of your head. “Might have seen _somebody_ doing relevés when she thought nobody was watching. But, you know, I value my marriage. Plausible deniability.”

You think that maybe someday you might understand what grownups are talking about. But not today.

Mom says to Aunt Tracy, “You didn’t forge my signature, did you?” Aunt Tracy says of course not, and then Mom looks down at you. “ _You_ can’t do that yet, can you?” You still don’t know what anybody’s talking about, so you shrug.

Aunt Tracy says, “Steve signed. He and Liam flipped a coin to see who would play dad. I said they should just show her positions and everything themselves, but they were very clear on how they aren’t teachers, and especially not for kids. You have to respect that, right, sis?”

“I don’t have to do anything other than—” But she stops talking, because Mama has walked up in front of Aunt Tracy now and is looking at her in a very weird way. “Helena,” Mom starts.

But then Mama is hugging Aunt Tracy, and Aunt Tracy’s face looks like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

And then Mama is hugging you, and then she lets you go really fast and says, “We will be working on that arabesque, young lady.”

You look up at Mom. She gives Aunt Tracy another shoulder bump. Then they both wink at you.

****

On Christmas morning, first thing, Uncle Liam and Uncle Steve come over. You don’t even know what Santa brought you yet, it’s that early. Mama complains to them when she opens the door, but Uncle Steve kisses her and Uncle Liam lifts her up in the air, and Mama does a… something, some kind of kick, but you don’t know what it’s called, and you’re disappointed that you don’t know yet.

“Cheer up, junior mint,” Uncle Steve says. “It’s Christmas! We have to catch a plane, but we got you something. That’s why we’re here so early.”

You ask what it is, and Uncle Liam laughs his huge, funny laugh. He pulls a big cardboard box with holes in its sides in from the hallway.

Mom is standing behind you. She says, “You didn’t _actually_.” You look up at her, and she’s taken off her glasses and is shaking her head.

Mama says, “Not looking at it is not going to help matters.”

“Both you _and_ crazy Giselle over there said we could!” Uncle Liam says.

“That is not how I remember it,” Mama tells him.

Uncle Steve says, “We might have waited to ask until you were likely to be… receptive to the idea.”

Mom says, “This is all Helena’s fault. I’ve never liked either one of you.”

And you look up at her again, because she never liked Uncle Steve and Uncle Liam? She looks down and says, “I’m kidding. They know I love them. And I love you, and so does your mama, and these silly boys said that you said you wanted this—and that you had some metaphor that went along with it, which definitely got you points—so here it is.”

She pushes you toward the box.

And then Aunt Tracy and Grandma and Grandpa get there, and everything is pretty crazy for a while because there are presents for everybody and cups of coffee for everybody except you and you are excited about the presents but you keep looking in the box, too, and the little cat is always still there, and he is kind of smoky gray but with darker black on his face and his paws, and you already know that you love him more than you have ever loved almost anything.

****

After breakfast, Mama asks you, “What are you going to name the creature?”

You have been thinking about this. “Pas De Chat,” you say. “And I want to call him Pas De.”

“Your cat’s last name is Cat, and his first name is Step Of?” Mom asks.

“Yes, but it’s in _French_ ,” you explain.

“You’re right. That makes all the difference,” Mom says.

Then she and Aunt Tracy and Mama and Grandpa have an argument about which planet the stork could possibly have got you from. You pick up Pas De very carefully and take him to Grandma and ask her if she thinks his name is okay. Grandma says that his name should be whatever you want it to be. She also says that she’s learned over the years to sit back and let the rest of the family hash things out when they need to. You and Pas De decide that you will sit back with her. You do that for a minute, but then you think that dominoes would be more fun, and Grandma does too.

The rest of the family keeps hashing things out.

****

“She’s certainly your child,” Mom says to Mama after everybody has left. “Wants ballet, gets ballet. Wants cat, gets cat.”

“I believe that technically she is _your_ child,” Mama says back.

“If she’s managed to get someone to set up a wind tunnel in the building, I will technically disown her and leave you holding the bag.”

“What bag?” you ask.

“A bag full of you, Junior. A bag full of you and your cat and your ballet gear. Which reminds me, I’m going to have to get you some new, because I know Tracy bought you that cut-rate stuff just to get my goat.”

“Can I get a goat too?” You’ve seen pictures of pygmy goats, and you have always wanted one, and somehow you just _know_ that Pas De has always wanted one too.

Mom says, “I think you’d better ask somebody other than me.”

You give Mama a quick look, but you are pretty sure she would say no. You decide to try Mom’s assistant, Claudia, the next time you see her. Claudia had given a lot of thought to the wind tunnel question before saying “I think your mom will kill me harder if I do it than you will if I don’t.” But Claudia had mostly been worried about the size, and you are sure that a pygmy goat is much smaller than a wind tunnel.

Mama says to you, “Are you making a plan?”

“For what?”

“Let me be very clear, baby Bering-Wells. If I find a goat anywhere in the vicinity of this apartment, you will find yourself in _dire need_ of an additional plan. That is, a plan for making your escape.”

“But Mama,” you say, “if I escape, then who will you teach to do a proper arabesque?”

“Speaking of goats, and getting them,” Mom says.

****

That night, you are curled against Mama on the sofa. You are holding Pas De, and Pas De is asleep already. “I want a story,” you yawn.

“Really,” Mama says. “I think you and your little cat might be too tired for a story tonight. I think Santa Claus and his various helpers have worn you out.”

“I want a story,” you maintain.

“All right,” she says. “All right. Once upon a time,” she starts. Then she stops.

“Once upon a time what happened?” you ask.

“Once upon a time,” she says, “there was a little girl named Helena George Bering-Wells.”

She hasn’t ever started a story like this before. “George is weird,” you say, because you’ve always thought that. You have a friend named George in school now, and he thinks it’s weird that you’ve got his name too. “Why is the middle name George anyway?”

“Because… your grandmother once danced for George Balanchine. Do you want a story or not?”

“Who’s George Balacheen I want a story,” you sigh.

Mom has been cleaning up in the kitchen, but now she comes and sits down on the other side of Mama. “I want a story too,” she says. “About Helena George Bering-Wells and her daughter, Helena George Bering-Wells, Junior.”

You yawn again. “And she had a cat named Pas De and they had adventures.”

Mama says, “I suppose they would have done.”

Mom says, “For our sins,” and you can feel Mama move closer to Mom. You are so close to being asleep that it’s okay; you don’t mind that she moves, and you don’t mind that they’re kissing each other now. You and Pas De are sleeping and dreaming your own story, one about proper arabesques… and wind tunnels… and pygmy goats… and Aunt Tracy tells everybody to dance…

END

**Author's Note:**

> original tumblr tags: I have this idea of how 'the talk' is eventually going to go, because Myka is going to say something like 'someday Junior you will meet somebody to whom you want to say the word penché', and Helena is going to look aggrieved and try to talk about what certain dances are metaphors for, and Junior is going to be like moms it is okay, Aunt Tracy has already explained, plus also I live in a media-saturated world and did not need an explanation in the first place, although it is very sweet of you all to be so concerned, but if you would please never explain to me what the word penché has to do with it, I would be very happy, because BOUNDARIES, (also actual quote from apparitionism's own niece regarding a secret to be kept:, 'aunt apparitionism I am not telling you a joke!', apparitionism's reply:, 'okay kid but that line is now fair game')


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